I guess its just that, if you pair the cpu up with a good gpu that you can possibly down clock a bit, with the right motherboard etc you can also devolt the cpu a bit, and save even more power. A Silver or Gold rated power supply at say 600-750w is more then enough.

I know a 7870 or GTX660 are actually quite power freindly, and are actually quite good in regards to performance/power usage as well as performance/$.

I know the notebook I was using ASUS k53tk-ss61-cbil could game decently enough, though got quite warm and performance was lacking somewhat. The A10 based newer models are supposed to be a heck of alot faster though and cooler. I would still like a way of disbaling the igp and using the discrete card period, but they dont seem to want you to do that. IGP while good also gets quite warm, doesn`t have the performance it needs(currently) and doesn`t always switch over the way it should.

Anyways. MATX motherboard with a good cpu i.e i5 or Phenom II x6 or A8-A10(which may not need a gpu depending on the games you play) 8gb total DDR3 1600-1866(low voltage i.e Gskill 1.35v ECO ram, 8gb to me is great 4 just doesnt seem enough, and does make a performance impact, just set your paging files correctly.) and a decent gpu such as Radeon 7850/7870 or GT650 GTX660 (the 7870 or 660 are better picks all around, more power yes, but also more performance for the power being used) they also stay quite cool, with good models, mine overclocked MSI 7870 Twin Frozr III gets to 62c clocked and volted 1192 core, 1425 mem, 1285 volts, power limit at 14 gaming and benching. The sapphire 7870 with dual fan is even better.